How we grew

Everything we serve is made with organic ingredients and often sourced from local farms. Our produce is seasonal from around the bay area, often picked only days before being served. Our poultry is free range and organic and our seafood wild and sustainable. Almost everything served is made from scratch in our kitchens to ensure freshness and quality.

The Radical Impact of Organic Foods

Founder and Co-CEO, Matthew Guelke

I’ve seen first-hand the power of how eating clean and fresh foods can radically improve your health. In my twenties, I lived in a rural community outside Tokyo studying martial arts. As I lived there, I saw the powerful connection between the food I ate and the strength and alertness of my body. In Japan, I understood that food is not solely about taste but impacts every part of life – health, stamina, and spirit.

When I returned to the US, I worked at a tech company in Silicon Valley with no plans to open a restaurant. When a family member was diagnosed with cancer, we planned a trip with our whole family to a health retreat center, Hippocrates Health Institute, a renowned medical facility that teaches a way of eating to fully detoxify the body and encourage lifelong health. I met cancer survivors who had turned around their diagnoses by eating a diet based on whole organic vegetables, juicing and avoiding many of the unhealthy foods and chemicals so common in the North American diet. I saw how within weeks both my parents health drastically improved. Even though my family usually ate well, it was clear that by removing all the toxins that we put in our bodies, we were finally allowing the best nutrients that existed in vegetables to work properly. Clean food was detoxing and healing us. I knew that the health transformation that I was experiencing needed to be accessible to others. It was then that I began to create the concept for what would ultimately become The Plant Café Organic.

Raising the bar on food sustainability while making delicious and healthy food has been at the forefront of The Plant’s mission since we started the company twelve years ago. When my business partner Mark Lewis and I started this venture, there were very few places to go if you wanted to eat solely organic or grab a green juice without all the sugars. The fact is that all these years later The Plant Café Organic is still one of the only restaurant chains that is completely committed to serving organic food. Unlike other restaurants, we don’t say we’re “organic wherever possible” and then go and buy conventional products. In fact, I truly believe that we are only going to move the dial on the health of our community and environment if we remain completely committed to our organic integrity. There remains in the industry a strong need for a restaurants and food service like us whose mission remains at the heart of everything we do.

For me, The Plant has been a labor of passion and commitment. It has been a tough road at times but we have never wavered from who we are: purveyors of organic and healthy food, environmental stewardship, and locally sourced products. I remain convinced that what we put into our bodies has a great impact on our health and wellness. Health is the real wealth, Gandhi said and we should not take it for granted. Join me and The Plant Café Organic on this journey.